“I closed my eyes, adding dark to dark, and the wanting unfurled like the sails of a phantom ship. This could be my universe. This nowhere world, circumscribed by skin and breath, where nothing matt...”

“I was the climber of a sheer cliff, dragging myself on bleeding hands towards a summit that I'd never reach and sometimes didn't want to reach. The things I cared about were the hooks I'd driven in...”

“I'd wasted so much of my life. So many of my days, and all of my promise, all of my dreams, lost to hospitals, to depression, to wanting to die. This wasn't how it was supposed to be. This is not w...”

“When I was lost in the fog, it was as though nothing else existed. And, afterwards, it seemed incomprehensible that I had ever really thought like that. Self-recrimination inevitably followed.”

“Sometimes I though about killing myself. The idea of it circled my head, shining and lovely like a tinsel halo. How beautiful it would be if everything could just stop. If I could stop. If I didn't...”

“The tapestry of my life was a ruin of unravelling threads. The brightest parts were a nonsensical madman's weaving. And now every day was a grey stitch, laid down with an outpatient's patience, one...”

“He could totally be your boyfriend," [Angel] went on with annoying persistance. "You guys could get married. I could be like a junior bridesmaid. Total could be your flower dog.""I'm only a kid!" I...”

“I'll never see Ivy alive again.But she's still everywhere. In every drop of bubbling swamp water. In every leaf hanging from every tree. In every speck of swamp mud. In every blade of grass. In eve...”

“If you meet an angel, you will have not peace, but a fever.”

“All I know is that I've ruled out wearing fairy wings. When I was nine I wanted to get married in fairy wings, and now I realize that's not cool anymore.”

“Death makes angels of us all and gives us wings where we had shoulders smooth as ravens claws.”

“An angel of God never has wings.”